Sir David: Dinosaurs still give us a thrill
SIR David Attenborough says bringing dinosaurs to life on screen has been “a remarkable achievement” which “takes your breath away”.
But the veteran broadcaster, 97, said seeing them reconstructed as animals prompts more questions about how they lived.
Sir David is taking viewers back millions of years narrating a new series of Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+.
He said: “I’m very aware that I’m watching extinct animals that I’ve never seen, but they are very familiar in the way they behave.”
Sir David said he was surprised at the skill of the animators and they had “clearly watched animals living today” to recreate how they would “go about dealing with problems”.
He added: “It’s such a thrill and that’s a remarkable achievement.You have the most sophisticated reconstructions and yet you film it in the way as though they were living animals.
Wonders
“When you first see one of these things, in the bones, and certainly in the reconstructions, it takes your breath away, but you really then want to start asking questions.
“How did they mate? How did they catch their food? How fast can they run?Were they aggressive? These basic realities are what palaeontologists use to work out how an animal alive 66 million years ago actually ate its food.
“It’s very important that after your mind is blown by those wonders, that someone says, ‘yes, and we can prove that they’re true’.”
He said: “We know very significantly more about dinosaurs than we did even 10 years ago. Dinosaurs will always produce something unexpected.”